


Clarity

by orphan_account



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Episode Related, Love Confessions, M/M, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 22:16:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8595916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Victor finds a new way to surprise the world and Yuuri isn’t quite sure what just happened. Episode 7 coda.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Although Yuuri spells his own name with one ‘u’ on the CD, I decided to go with the AO3 tag spelling. Curse you, conformity. Also, I believe Yuuri, Phichit and Victor all speak very fluent English seeing as how they all seem to be communicating in depth without any problems. Written during a bout of 4am insomnia, so apologies for any mistakes.
> 
> The [wink wink nudge nudge tweet](http://gotohellsenpai.tumblr.com/post/153343675199/kubo-confirmed-victor-and-yuri-kissed-and-yes-it) about 'simultaneous airings' indicates that it’s probably their first kiss, so that is what this fic treats it as.

phichit+chu  
♥ 8.3K likes  
phichit+chu: so proud! thank you to all my fans who supported me! grand final here I come!!! #gold #cupofchina #beijing  
  
Anya  
♥ 1.5K likes  
Anya: Darling and I at the hotel! Wearing #armani #swarovski #stylegram #styleblogger #me #ootd #love #beijingfashion. Make-up by #chanel.  
  
+guanghongji+  
♥ 10.3K likes  
+guanghongji+: me and leo after the #cupofchina… thank you to my supporters  
  
yuri-plisetsky  
♥ 7.9K likes  
yuri-plisetsky: 5am training. #skaterussia  
  
phichit+chu  
♥ 12.9K likes  
phichit+chu: the true #victuri of the night… #eros #yurionice @v-nikiforov  
  
sukeota3sisters  
♥ 938 likes  
sukeota3sisters: うわ〜

 

~

 

In Detroit, as part of his English literature course Yuuri had watched _Pride and Prejudice_ as a shortcut to understanding the novel. There was a scene in the movie he had watched where everyone else in the room disappeared when the two leads were dancing, and Yuuri had thought it was terribly romantic and also something that would never happen to him.

Admittedly, he hadn’t bargained on Victor Nikiforov barging into his home and his life. He hadn’t bargained on falling slowly in love with Victor, and he certainly hadn’t bargained on Victor kissing him on the ice rink at the Cup of China _._ As it turns out, you will tend to forget about everyone else in the world when the only person whose opinion counts is kissing you like _you_ are the only thing that matters.

It’s strange that even as it surprised Yuuri, the kiss made complete sense, like something inevitable falling into place. A part of him had wondered what the small touches meant, the looks held slightly too long, and warm conversation that went beyond ‘student and coach’. The casual intimacies that ran out over months, all adding up to one moment. Victor wasn’t nearly as surprising as he thought he was, and Yuuri could only smile up at him when they finally separated and ask, “Really?”

Victor was looking at him like he was something completely new, and yet also something as well-loved and familiar as a childhood toy. Yuuri’s heart kept missing beats, and his breath was still running short from the end of his free skate. 

For a few moments, it was only Victor – then the world around him filled in slowly, one thing at a time. First was the cold wet on his back, and then almost immediately after the roar of the stadium around them cheering. Yuuri always blocked out the crowd now when he skated, focusing only on Victor. Hearing the outside world again was like they had both been underwater for hours, and only just come up for air.

“Oh god,” Yuuri said, as he realised that Victor had just kissed him in front of an entire packed stadium and live TV crews. _Everyone_ had just seen skating legend Victor Nikiforov kiss him. He felt himself burn red with embarrassment, and Victor must have seen it in his face immediately because he gave out his free-spirited laugh as he finally got to his feet and held out a hand to bring Yuuri up with him.

It seemed natural to keep holding Victor’s hand after that, something solid to hold on to so Yuuri didn’t just cover up his face with his hands and run in shame from the rink. For his part, Victor interlaced their fingers together and held onto him tightly. It was strange how easy that was, how natural and comfortable it was for them to do something which fell so firmly outside the bounds of what their relationship was meant to be.

Yuuri had a brief flashback of the first time Victor had asked to be his lover, months ago. “ _I just want Victor to be Victor,”,_ Yuuri had said, embarrassed and a little hurt by the flippancy with which Victor addressed something Yuuri didn’t yet understand himself. Yuuri didn’t think Victor even understood what they would come to be to each other, back then. Or maybe he did. Maybe he had known from the minute he had watched that YouTube video.

They only separated their hands at the kiss and cry, when suddenly the presence of cameras and reporters loomed close. Yuuri found one of the Vicchan lookalikes someone had thrown onto the rink and hugged it close, burying his face into the plush doll. He heard tattling of others in mixed languages, but tried to ignore them. Maybe they thought he was crying. _Then the joke is on them,_ Yuuri thought. _Only Victor gets to see my tears today._

If Yuuri had been having these kind of possessive thoughts for weeks, it was only just now that he realised, entirely, the implications of them. Before, it hadn’t seemed to matter what Victor was to him, as long as he was by his side. But now… 

Now, Yuuri wished the toy poodle in his arms was Victor’s back instead. He felt heat rise to his face with the thought of it, but Victor was already running a slight touch over his arm to warn him of reality hitting.

“Yuuri, the scores!”

Looking up from the toy and squinting at the screen, Yuuri saw the numbers come up. After a second, he heard the Russian exclamation and felt Victor embrace him. It was a very good score, thankfully, but he didn’t know where the others had placed.

“Second!” Victor exclaimed joyously. Sure enough, the television screens switched to show the Japanese flag positioned just below the blues and red of the Thai, and Yuuri smiled.

“Phichit won!” he exclaimed happily to Victor, embarrassment forgotten, and Victor gave him the fond, soft smile he had just given Yuuri on the ice. Yuuri felt himself blushing again now he knew what that smile meant, and hid his face back in the safe, comforting fur of the poodle toy.

He was separated from Victor for the medal ceremony, and had the distinct pleasure of seeing Chris looking at Yuuri with … Dislike? Disgust? Respect? It was hard to say. Yuuri wondered if his routine beating Chris’ was the main cause of his strange expression, or if it was because of what Victor had done. In any case, Chris was strangely quiet before Phichit arrived and tackled Yuuri with enthusiasm.

“We won!” Phichit yelled, separating from Yuuri only to take both his hand and jump up and down with excitement. “We did it! Yuuri, you were amazing!”

“I didn’t get to see your performance, Phichit, I’m sorry,” Yuuri admitted. “But Phichit - you _won!_ ”

“I know!” his friend exclaimed, grinning modestly. “It’s crazy, huh?”

“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me,” one of the staff said, motioning to the rink. They were all cheered by the audience, and had several minutes worth of photographs taken with all of the medal winners. Yuuri had never been so eager for an awards ceremony to be over. All he could think about was finding Victor, and taking him somewhere private, and… 

 _And what?_ Yuuri thought, fighting not to blush again even as his mind skirted over dangerous waters. Unfortunately for Yuuri, living together with notoriously shameless Victor had given him more than enough material to know in explicit detail what Victor looked like undressed. He even knew smaller things, like the fact there was a beauty mark behind one of Victor’s ears that he had seen once when Victor was lying all over him.

And… what if that’s all this was? Just another level to Victor’s casual intimacies. He knew that the American predilection for kissing friends on the mouth was exaggerated by Japanese media, but was it so strange to think this might just be Victor flirting harmlessly as usual? That it was his way of showing affection, but without romantic intent?

Questions chased themselves around Yuuri’s head like frantic skaters in a rink, occasionally crashing and colliding with each other and forming even more questions. After all, hadn’t Victor offered to kiss Yuuri in the carpark just to shut him up? What if he had embarrassed Yuuri just as another gimmick?

He was walking back through the stadium corridors when he felt the warm hand on his back that meant Victor had found him.

“Yuu-ri,” Victor said, drawing out his name. “You look like the world is ending because you didn’t get gold.”

Yuuri realised he had been staring into space despondently since the cameras had stopped focusing on them, and he tried smiling at Victor reassuringly.

“No, just tired,” he said, but Victor narrowed his eyes. He felt Victor’s hand leave his shoulder, but brush briefly against the back of his hand as his coach walked beside him. He shivered a little, uncertain whether it was caused by the cold or his tangled knot of emotions.

Finally, the moment he had been dreading arrived and he and Victor found himself surrounded by reporters and cameras.

“Mr. Nikiforov, is it true that-”

“Mr. Katsuki, when did your relationship with-”

“Is this a social commentary on your respective countries’ policies towards LGBT people, or are you two dating?”

Victor stepped slightly in front of Yuuri, holding his palms out in peace, and flicked his hair with his overwhelming trademark charm.

“Please, only questions about skating,” Victor said sweetly, and was it Yuuri’s imagination or did his accent thicken remarkably? “My student is very tired, please keep things brief.”

The press seemed to take a moment to digest this _,_ before one man shouted, “Mr. Katsuki, was Mr. Nikiforov aware you were going to perform the quadruple flip at the end of your skate?”

“As I said-”

“No,” Yuuri interjected. “He wasn’t." 

Yuuri felt Victor turn to look at him, but he ignored him. Victor wasn’t the only one who could make public declarations.

“My skating routine, _Yuri on Ice,_ is about my skating career,” Yuuri said slowly, making sure he pronounced every word as clearly as possible. “My coach, Victor, is integral to that story, and to my theme this season. I wouldn’t be here without him,” he said, feeling Victor’s eyes boring into him from beside him. “And I… I wanted to show him what that means to me.”

There was a brief pause at his words, and Yuuri felt his face heat up for something like the seventh time that day.

“Now that Yuuri can do a quadruple flip, he’ll definitely win at the Rostelecom Cup and advance to the Grand Prix Final!” Victor exclaimed. “I’m looking forward to going to Russia as his coach!”

There were more questions, but Victor’s words had set Yuuri’s thoughts flying again. He only half-concentrated on what he was being asked as he thought about the way Victor had cut across him and emphasized the fact he was Yuuri’s coach first and foremost. Or had Yuuri read too much into it?

“Enough for today, I think,” Victor laughed, and Yuuri was annoyed to note that he was using his flirtatious charm on the female reporter who had asked the latest question. “If you will excuse us!”

He all but dragged Yuuri through the crowd, with a firm hand on his shoulder as they left the press behind and headed to the changing rooms. Yuuri went in alone, and tried to shower and change as quickly as possible whilst very pointedly not looking at his phone. He didn’t want to know what everyone back home thought of Victor’s… display of affection, not when he didn't quite know what it meant himself. 

Absentmindedly, he traced his lower lip with his index finger in front of the changing room mirror, and thought distantly, _Victor Nikiforov kissed me._ Neither the part of him that idolised Victor for years, nor the part of him that wanted to throttle him when he was insensitive and brash and ridiculous, could quite reconcile it. But what Yuuri kept coming back to most wasn’t even the kiss; it was the look Victor gave him, full of love. Yes, love – that was the only word Yuuri could use. All his doubts of Victor’s intentions seemed meagre when he thought about Victor’s shining eyes in that moment. 

“Yuuri?” Victor called, and Yuuri realised he had been staring at himself for a while. “Coming!” he yelled back quickly, grabbing his bag and running to meet Victor at the door.

“Everything okay?” Victor asked, with strange notes in his voice of uncertainty and kindness. This was a new side to Victor, one Yuuri is unfamiliar with. Victor was being… soft.

“Y-” Yuuri said, then changed his mind. “I don’t know. I… I don’t know what it means.”

Victor’s eyes softened and blazed with intensity simultaneously, and Yuuri’s heart melted a little. “Yuuri,” he said, taking Yuuri’s hand in his own and bringing it to his lips. He kissed it, in a ridiculous move that would be bizarre coming from anyone else and instead made total sense because this was  _Victor Nikiforov,_ king of melodrama and grand gestures. “It means whatever you want it to mean.”

“What I want,” Yuuri repeated, uncertainly. “And what you want?”

The icy eyes burned, heating Yuuri’s entire being. “I thought,” Victor said, pushing Yuuri against the corridor wall swiftly and pressing against him, one arm flung up on the wall next to Yuuri’s head. “I made that clear,” he finished, lips inches from Yuuri’s own. Yuuri felt paralyzed by Victor’s gaze, and the funny surging feeling Yuuri had started getting around Victor returned with a vengeance. His entire being felt electrified, every nerve poised for…

Victor kissed him, and Yuuri sighed into the kiss, reaching up to cradle Victor’s silvery head. Encouraged, Victor deepened the kiss and tugged Yuuri towards him at the waist. They stopped and started breathlessly, Yuuri a little uncertain as to what he was doing but driven by his desire to just get at as much of Victor as he could. He was finally allowed – allowing himself – to _touch,_ touch as much as he liked, and Yuuri wanted more.

He groaned, and Victor suddenly tensed and broke away.  
  
“Not here,” he said, and Yuuri was pleased and aroused and mortified at once by how low and cracked Victor’s voice sounded compared to his usual chirping tone.

“Yes,” Yuuri said, but already he missed Victor’s lips and drew him back to kiss them lightly once or twice, which of course turned into-

“Yuuri,” Victor laughed, but he also kissed back hungrily.

“Ahh,” Yuuri sighed. “Victor, we have to stop.” Victor had moved from Yuuri’s lips to peppering his neck with small nips.

“I said that first,” Victor said, biting the skin over Yuuri’s clavicle gently before separating. “You never listen to your coach.”

“Wow! That’s going to make a great instagram,” Phichit’s voice exclaimed cheerfully, and Yuuri whirled to see his friend filming them on his phone.

“Oh god,” Yuuri whimpered. “I, I…”

Phichit grinned. “You know, the other skaters use the change rooms too!”

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Gold Medal,” Victor said suddenly. “But please, if you care about Yuuri, you can’t let that video go public. Such - _transgressions_ \- could cost Yuuri his skating career. Or worse.” he finished quietly, and Yuuri felt a great swell of anger.

“I don’t care,” Yuuri said. “I only care about what you think.”

Victor said something very fast in Russian, closing his eyes and looking frustrated. He opened them, and kissed Yuuri on the forehead, before taking his face between both his hands. “Yuuri,” he said slowly. “As your coach, I forbid you from flaunting your relationship to the public.”

“This coming from the man who kissed him on live TV,” Phichit muttered, and then in a louder voice said, “I won’t upload it, then. But after what you did, everyone is going to _know_ now anyway.”

“I do know,” Victor said quietly turning back to Phichit. “But believe me, Russia does not look kindly upon this kind of thing. I’d rather have plausible deniability at least for now.”

“Japan doesn’t very much either,” Yuuri admitted. “I don’t even know what I’d say if the press asked me if I was gay,” he said, running the last word in Japanese in his head and matching it to the few news reports he remembered of homosexual scandals over the years.

“You don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to,” Victor said. “You can just answer questions about your skating.”

“You _are_ my skating, Victor,” Yuuri said, completely seriously. “You’ve been in every routine I’ve skated.”

“Yuuri, you really do take being a fan to the next level,” Phichit said wryly, shaking his head. “Okay! Since you two are ignoring me half the time anyway, I’m going to go celebrate now. I will see you in Russia, yes?”

“Yes!” Yuuri exclaimed. “Congratulations again, Phichit!”

“And you,” Phichit said, smiling and embracing Yuuri. “And don’t expect me to be completely media silent on this!” he said as he waved to Victor. “The Victuri club is going to expect me to say something about it!” 

“Victory?” Yuuri questioned.

“Vic-tuu-ri,” Phichit spelled out. “Victor and Yuuri. Victuri!”

Beside Yuuri, Victor lit up like a Christmas tree. “Hashtag Victuri!” he squawked, and dug out his phone before remembering his own self-imposed media blackout and sighing in defeat. “Yuuri,” he whined, “We even have an amazing _couple name._ ”

 _A couple,_ Yuuri thought, and didn’t miss the way Phichit smirked at him before walking off. “So,” Yuuri began, taking Victor’s hand in his own and leading him the other way towards the exit. “Are we dating now?”

“Well we spend every hour together anyway,” Victor mused. “I’m not really sure what we’d change.”

“Well, maybe less being mean to me and more katsudon.”

Victor laughed. “Ahahaha. No. That remains your reward for winning only.”

“Worth a try,” Yuuri pouted, but he thought he could live never eating katsudon again if Victor stayed by his side.

Victor’s hand tightened in his own. “To be honest, I planned to reward you at the grand prix with a kiss, or the possibility of a relationship, but, well.”

“Well?” Yuuri asked, pleased. Victor had been thinking about this for a while. About wanting him for a while.

“Well,” Victor said, ponderously. “I guess I’ve always had very poor self-control. And I fell in love with you more and more deeply every day, until it just seemed pointless… not to.”

Yuuri blinked for a moment, then murmured in Japanese under his breath, kissing Victor on the hand as he had kissed Yuuri earlier.

“What does that mean?” Victor asked, looking flushed.

“It means ‘I love you too’,” Yuuri said simply, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and yell at me on [tumblr](http://www.thylaa.tumblr.com) about the ice skating anime.


End file.
